The sale of his works was an eventful procedure, but seemed to turn out satisfactorily, at least until a writ arrived. Initially, the Perkins offered their factory to BASF, but its directors declined. Then Thomas Perkin met a rival dyer Edward Brooke in a train carriage, and they began talking about the future. Brooke said that his firm, Brooke, Simpson and Spiller of Hackney Wick, was keen to make alizarin, and asked whether the Perkins would consider some form of partnership. This was rejected, but a little later the possibility of an outright sale was mentioned.
The Perkins suggested a sum of £110,000, not including stocks, supplies and future orders valued in the region of £35,000–£50,000 for making the red shade and blue shade of alizarin, and also mauve, violets numbers 1 and 2, magenta, and black powder. The ingredients in stock included alumina, petroleum, acetic acid, alum cake, aniline, bromine, china clay, methylated spirit, coal, manganese, caustic soda, muriatic acid, naphtha, nitric acid, foaming Nordhausen acid, sulphuric acid, sulphate of potash, soda crystals and chloride of lime. Edward Brooke was very interested. He believed the matter had to be conducted in secrecy, lest an interest from other companies drove up the price. His initial correspondence referred to ‘a certain matter ventilated a few days ago’ and called for a formal meeting at his office. ‘We will be ready,’ he wrote.
Several meetings followed in November 1873, including an inspection of the books at the Perkin factory and a tour around the works. Thomas Perkin told Brooke that Perkin and Sons had already contracted to sell all the artificial alizarin they could make for the following year, almost 400 tons at a price of 2s 3d per pound. The Perkins calculated that the actual cost of producing alizarin was 1s 6d, and accordingly estimated a profit for 1874 of £30,000. ‘I really thought there was now scarcely any limit to its consumption,’ Thomas Perkin explained, ‘and that consequently new works would have to be provided if the demand was to be met.’ He reminded them that at that point synthetic alizarin was being produced nowhere else in England. Accordingly, their site was subject to strict security measures, but Thomas Perkin regarded Edward Brooke as a highly trustworthy businessman, albeit a competitor, and he ‘felt sure that he would not take advantage of anything he saw even if the proposed purchase fell through’.
Before the sale was completed, the Perkins felt obliged to describe a few handicaps particular to the manufacture of their successful colours. The Greenford Green site had two great defects – an inadequate water supply and the entire absence of suitable drainage. The site sloped from north to south and was heavily waterlogged from the canal. Multicoloured waste regularly found its way back into the canal, the nearby brook and the River Brent.
Alizarin involved a far more complex and laborious process than mauve or violet or magenta. ‘I warned them that the purchase of the crude anthracene was really as important as the manufacture of the alizarin from it, and required great care and skill in the selection,’ Thomas Perkin remembered. In addition, manufacture was ‘very heavy’, and required one of their chemists to be in attendance at all times. ‘We attributed a good deal of our success to my residing very near the works so as to be able to be constantly there whenever anything important was going on … when I was away from the works for only one week the production fell off, and during 1873 when I was on the continent for three weeks the production fell off to the amount of several thousands of pounds.’
Despite these details, Brooke, Simpson and Spiller swiftly agreed to a purchase fee of £105,000, including all patents, at the end of December 1873. William Perkin recorded how the final figure was settled over wine and biscuits, and that he and his brother agreed to be available for consultation and assistance for the first six months after the sale. The first act of the new owners was to stamp over the Perkins’ invoice books with their own name. They then hired two Perkin and Sons’ technicians, Mr Brown and Mr Stocks.
Eight months later, the works at Greenford Green were almost at a standstill. The client list was destroyed, the entire production of colour ravaged by mismanagement and pigheadedness. The damage was laid out in a writ filed by Brooke, Simpson and Spiller in September 1874. The new owners claimed they were not to blame, but instead accused William and Thomas Perkin of deception bordering on fraud.
The new owners claimed they had been entirely misled as to the true value of the business and its profits. They said there had been an inadequate system of book-keeping, and that they were never shown the full accounts when they asked for them. They claimed that Thomas Perkin had assured them that they would get the full value of their investment back within two or three years, but this now seemed an impossibility. ‘Now that we are able to go into facts and figures for ourselves,’ Edward Brooke wrote to Thomas Perkin’s solicitor, ‘we are alarmed to find that we have been fearfully, but we are sure unintentionally, deceived by your clients in the cost of the manufactured product.’
No matter what they did, the new owners were unable to make a profit. Brooke said he was told that the cost of making alizarin was between 1s 4d and 1s 6d per pound, but found that the true cost was 1s 11d per pound, to be sold under contract at 2s 3d per pound with a £6 discount per 100 pounds. Consequently there seemed no possibility of achieving profits on the existing contracts. Brooke Simpson and Spiller thus demanded their money back, plus an additional £5,000 ‘to compensate us for our loss, trouble and disappointment’.
The Perkins declined this offer. They were hit with more complaints. After another estimate a few weeks later, Edward Brooke discovered that the actual cost of manufacturing alizarin had slightly exceeded 2s 3d per pound, and that the £6 discount meant they faced losses of more than £3,000. He also claimed that when his colleague Richard Simpson had visited the works he had noticed 25 retorts set in brickwork and carefully whitewashed. He was told that these were superfluous to their present needs, but could be used as replacements if required. Simpson had since discovered that they were all cracked and worthless.
William and Thomas Perkin prepared a stinging rebuttal. Above all, they were wounded that their reputation should be threatened in this way, and that such allegations were now placed on file at the Public Record Office. Thomas Perkin believed that the detail of Edward Brooke’s recollection of his visits to the site and their negotiations were ‘totally imaginary’. He claimed that he was given full and frank access to the books, and that ‘no conversation whatever took place [regarding] the cost of manufacture of alizarin or the quantity of alizarin that could be manufactured or the profits that might be realised from it’.
Thomas Perkin then ridiculed the method by which Brooke, Simpson and Spiller had tried to make alizarin, claiming that any attempt by the Perkins to offer advice was dismissed as unnecessary interference. Looking at Brooke’s method of making 34 tons of alizarin, Perkin noted with alarm how ‘the quantity of crude anthracene exceeds the quantity required by 16 tons … the amount of light oils is not sufficient by 120 gallons … the chloride of lime is in excess by 4 tons … the sulphuric acid is in excess by 6 tons …’
As to the retorts, Perkin rejected the insinuation that they were whitewashed to deceive the plaintiffs. They were out of use due to their foul stench, and were currently being cleaned. Only one was cracked, the remainder being used for the first three months after Brook, Simpson and Spiller had bought the works.
The new owners also mishandled the disposal of toxic waste, releasing calcium chloride into the Grand Junction Canal, thereby visibly polluting the water and ground for a quarter of a mile surrounding the works. Worse still, they failed to maintain the existing water pumps and thus drew contaminated water from the canal back into the production process.
The Perkins’ conclusion was harsh. Since their purchase of the works, the brothers believed, Brooke and partners had managed the business carelessly and injudiciously. ‘Instead of looking after it themselves and personally superintending the working of the various processes as we had done, they seldom went over the works or remained on the premises more than two or
three hours at one time … they also very largely increased many of the expenses and outgoings of the business in a way which in our judgement was utterly unnecessary.’ Their insurance and rates bill, for instance, had gone up from the Perkins’ annual payment of £228 to £1,594 in just the first six months, suggesting colossal financial ineptitude.
In March 1875, a judge ruled that the plaintiffs did not have a sufficient case, and thus threw out their claims, awarding costs to the Perkins. Subsequently they reflected on why Brooke, Simpson and Spiller, previously a highly reputable company, might have chosen to act in this way, and manage their business so poorly. ‘We are reluctantly compelled to believe … that their continued and persistent opposition to all arguments and advice was wilful and deliberate, and intended to produce loss and damage the business.’ The Perkins hinted at a conspiracy, perhaps believing that Brooke, Simpson and Spiller were exacting a painful revenge. Not only were the company’s founders envious of Perkin and Sons’ success with alizarin, but they were still resentful of an earlier decision by the Perkins not to purchase raw materials from them (when Brooke, Simpson and Spiller took over the firm of Simpson, Maule and Nicholson in 1868, the latter regularly conducted business with William Perkin, selling him aniline and nitrobenzene). Their claim was thus intended to ruin the Perkins financially and by reputation. If Brooke, Simpson and Spiller had succeeded, they would have caused enormous damage to the Perkins’ trade and rendered the future sale of their business extremely difficult.
As it was, it was Brooke, Simpson and Spiller who faced the future with apprehension. Within a year of the litigation, they tried to sell the works on. The firm continued to lose money for the next eighteen months, and destroyed all of the advantages established by the Perkins. It tried many ways to stem its losses. One of its first decisions was to cease immediately the production of mauve.
Part Two
EXPLOITATION
10
RED LETTER DAYS
The tyranny of mauve is over! That’s the word from Vivian Kistler, a member of the Color Marketing Group, an organization that helps decide which colors we wear and decorate our homes in. There’s no doubt that mauve is now dead as a fashion color, Kistler said. Even firms that manufacture rubber and plastic kitchen products such as dish drainers are phasing out their mauve lines. ‘In the last six or seven years we have been mauved to death,’ Kistler said, laughing.
The St Louis Post-Dispatch at the 12th annual New York ArtExpo
art dealers’ trade show, 1990
The fashion caravan sashayed into Milan yesterday for the third leg of its month-long tour, due to end in Paris in a fortnight. Milan is the city where fashion’s most influential labels, such as Gucci, Prada, Versace and Dolce & Gabbana, show their collections and set the season’s trends, which are quickly appropriated en masse by the high street. There were plenty of modern and supremely wearable pieces for those who like a bit of Versace-style flash glamour, from the mauve cropped sheepskin jacket and the lady-chic purple trouser suit to the claret velvet tailored jacket and the streamlined camel car coat.
But the Italian fashion parade says mauve is back, Independent, February 2000
A wealthy man at thirty-six, Perkin built his dream home and called it The Chestnuts. His previous house in Sudbury he fitted out as his new laboratory. He found more time for music, and for the committees of chemical societies and church councils. He spent his money – a sum approaching £100,000 – on charity and local property. Sometimes he played woodwind instruments.
And in this way one of the greatest chemists of his age opted out. Unattached to either academic institution or industrial concern, he chose to continue his researches in seclusion, contributing the occasional piece of important work to the journals but never again making such a significant contribution to the trade of his country. His reputation was secure, although he knew that some regarded his talents as ill-spent. The questions were still asked: What use was a colour? How much was a colour worth to science? Did Perkin really want to be remembered for turning the streets purple?
Perkin himself appeared content. He had proved his doubters wrong. He had made a lot of money, and the view from his garden stretched for a stunning green acre. He had created radiance out of basest residue, and in so doing provided the key to other people’s goldmines. But perhaps there was anxiety too: he had contributed to carbon chemistry, but he had not fulfilled his original quest, the synthesis of quinine, an achievement that would have improved the health of millions. He was certainly dismayed at the exploitation of his invention overseas as the British dye trade lost ground. And perhaps he saw his work having little further benefit in the years to come. He would have been surprised.
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‘My personal memories of him go back to about the year 1880, when I was six,’ his nephew Arthur Waters recalled. ‘Uncle William’s visits were always red-letter days with us, and I have vivid memories of a wonderful show of conjuring tricks.’ Perkin liked to get to Waters’ house on his bicycle, and usually arrived with his black clothes covered in chalk dust. Coal-tar had not yet covered the roads.
A local writer from Harrow recalled ‘happy summer days in the field now Sudbury Recreation Ground, where William was wont to gather the youngsters around him by sounding a trombone and quietly enjoying the spectacle of seeing them scramble after the sweets and other delicacies which he scattered among them’.
His brother Thomas became known locally as the Squire of Greenford, spending much time on horseback around his farm and on the Greenford Drag Hunt. He became a churchwarden, and continued to play several stringed instruments, including a Stradivarius violin.
William Perkin’s first wife Jemima had died in 1862, and four years later he married a Polish woman called Alexandrine Caroline Mollwo, who bore him three daughters and a son. ‘Aunt Sasha (as we called her) was a good housekeeper, and liked everything well ordered,’ Waters remembered. ‘The house was beautifully furnished in the mid-Victorian style, and there was a large and lovely garden, and hothouses produced the most delicious grapes I have ever tasted. Uncle William was a vegetarian, and certainly knew how to grow the best.’
Perkin became an evangelical churchman, organising weekly meetings with visiting preachers and raising money for a new barrel-organ for the hymns. Personally, he preached charity, moderation and abstinence from alcohol, and sometimes these beliefs combined. ‘I always felt an interest in this neighbourhood,’ he told the Harrow Observer. ‘I and some of my neighbours thought that something might be done for the big lads and working men of Sudbury, and we hired some of the cottages in the paddocks (now the Sunday school) and also a shed opposite which had been used for for carriages in connection with the racecourse at the back, which fortunately for the neighbourhood was not a success. These cottages were used for a working men’s club and institute, and the shed for lectures and amateur concerts.’
The club was only a short-lived venture, because the working men did like a drink. ‘It was difficult to keep in hand on account of the lively spirits connected with it, and I felt rather unhappy on account of its purely secular character.’
At home Perkin read the journals, in which he followed Germany’s dominance of the industry he founded. He read that Pullars of Perth had moved into the revolutionary art of dry cleaning. In 1875 he probably saw an account of how Brooke, Simpson and Spiller had sold his old factory to Burt, Boulton and Heywood. By then, most of his customers had been driven to buy alizarin abroad. Burt, Boulton and Heywood immediately faced claims that the old Perkin factory had caused irreversible environmental damage, including water pollution, and so it closed the factory down, transferring the works to Silvertown, Essex, a plant which later become part of the British Alizarine Company.
Elsewhere, there was the prospect that Perkin’s dyes would enjoy artistic posterity. The textile designer William Morris experimented with synthetically dyed wool and silk in some of his earliest embroideries (although he later suspected their fastne
ss and rejected them in favour of natural recipes). Perkin’s dyes were now also being used as artist’s pigments, and these aniline insoluble ‘lakes’ had given rise to the new shades of vermilionette, Post Office red, and emerald tint green. The Journal of the Society of Dyers and Colourists noted that the government was using the reds extensively in its official publications, and that the Manchester Tramway Company had used vermilionette on its cars.
In the galleries, there was disquiet over how swiftly the new colours faded without varnish. In 1877, the science journal Nature noted the concerns of Mr Joseph Sidebotham, a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, who saw that aniline colours were being used increasingly for tinting photographs. ‘Anyone who knows the speedy alteration by light of nearly all of these colours will protest against their use,’ Nature reported. ‘A statement of this with the authority of some of our chemists would probably have the effect of causing them to be discontinued by all artists who care to think that their works should last more than a single year.’
Some years later, the earliest attempts in New York to regulate the contents of food caused a scare over the use of aniline dyes as a colorant. They were used extensively in sausages and jams and confectionery and baking. Perkin himself would be drawn in, as an American reporter accused him of poisoning his people. ‘I would not like to take sides in that matter,’ he said. ‘It is probable that there have been abuses of the uses of aniline dyes in foodstuffs. In fact, I know there have been. But this is certain: the amount of aniline dye necessary to colour a food is so minute that if the same quantity of strychnine were used it would be equally harmless.’
Perkin’s colours travelled the world on postage stamps. When, in the mid-1860s, the American Civil War caused a severe cotton famine, dye firms were forced to look for new markets. In Lancashire, the firm of Roberts, Dale & Co. had a significant breakthrough when its chemist Heinrich Caro struck up a relationship with the London banknote and stamp-printing firm Thomas De la Rue.
Mauve Page 12
